Gunfight Part 3

My opinion of Mexican police has never been very high, but occasionally I have met officers of the highest caliber that were the equal of US law enforcement officers in every sense of the word. I found that this day the Chihuahua State Police we were dealing with were of this caliber, and I believe that if they had not been with us that day I would not be here to write this story.

As our little convoy headed west out of Palomas on the poorly maintained dirt road and just at the location I expected, we ran into a roadblock consisting of five or six vehicles placed across the roadway blocking our progress. Standing outside of these vehicles were approximately twenty men, armed with all many of weapons, from AK-47s and shotguns, to pistols of every make and model; all pointed as us in the vehicles. There were three State Police Officers in the front vehicle, and three in the back and almost instantly when they became aware of the roadblock, all six were out of their vehicles pointing Galil automatic rifles at our assailants and advancing at them screaming for them to drop their weapons.

The sight of those deadly intimidating weapons in the hands of men who had obviously been trained to use them had the desired affect. Almost immediately our assailants turned away from us in a panic with weapons still in hand, but running back to their vehicles. They all entered the vehicles and fled away from our position. My Customs friend and I breathed a sigh of relief as we sat there knowing full well how close to death we were. What amazed us both was that no rounds were fired by anyone. This was a true "Mexican stand off" if there ever was one, and all it would have taken was for one person to panic and start firing and the war would have begun in earnest. When it became obvious that the immediate threat was over the State Police Officers wasted no time and the convoy resumed its travel towards the Commandancia.

We were tense until we extracted the prisoners from the vehicle and deposited them in the State Police Commandancia which was only an old farm house converted to a shabby group of offices containing a fax machine and telephone and some office furniture. The entire time we were at the Commandancia there was an armed and alert guard posted at each doorway, while we addressed the cumbersome legal documents of the Spanish legal system that were foreign to us as US law men. I had to sign a document that stated that I had examined the bodies of each prisoner and certified that they had not been tortured while in Mexican custody.

They obviously had been tortured, but when interrogated by me; they both denied it happening. They just wanted out of Mexico and would have signed any document I asked them to sign. Four hours later we had satisfied the demands of Mexican justice and the prisoners were released into our custody. I refrained from interrogating the prisoners about where the stash houses were located in Columbus while in the presence of the State Police Officers, fearing that the drug cartels may have had a plant there in the room at the Commandancia.

As soon as we were across the US/Mexican border, we went to my office where we fed our prisoners a can of Coke and quizzed them on where the stash houses were located in my town. They readily I did so, ecstatically happy to be once again in the US, even though they were facing burglary charges. I then thanked my Customs friend for his help and wished him a safe trip home, while I transported my prisoners to the County Jail in Deming. This is only the beginning of this story and the best is yet to come.